Lawrence Watt-Evans - In the Empire of Shadow

“We can check that easily enough,” Susan said. She leaned forward to speak past Amy, to Prossie. “Did they send a rescue party?”

* * * *

Prossie had been sitting quietly, not listening, not thinking, but just being ; it was something she had never really done until very recently. All her life, back in the Empire, no matter where she was sent, no matter where she lived, she had had to either listen, or to actively shut out the constant background noise of other minds; she had never, ever been able to sit and to do absolutely nothing, to neither think nor heed the world around her. The Empire did not allow telepaths that sort of isolation; telepaths were watched and guarded, always kept aboard crowded ships or in crowded military installations or in crowded cities. Telepaths, even should one somehow find herself far away from all ordinary minds, were always in contact with the far-flung network of their clan, always open to the common chitchat of their sibs and cousins; even their dreams were shared, built up of the gossip passing back and forth around them and the images that drifted through a shared unconscious.

In Prossie’s brief stay on Earth she had been too frightened by the strangeness of mental silence, too lonely, too worried about what would become of her, to really appreciate the virtues of solitude. A jail cell on an alien world, she thought, was hardly the best place for a young woman to look into herself.

And at first, here in Faerie, she had been too busy worrying about survival, too concerned with the politics of Base One, too involved with events-and she had had Carrie, sending to her, listening to her, keeping her in touch.

But since she had cut herself loose, told Carrie to break off, she had begun to drift inward, to look down into the depths of her own mind, depths that she had never really acknowledged to exist until now.

She knew, of course, that minds all exist on multiple levels, sometimes in parallel and contradictory consciousness-she had seen for herself that people could believe things at the same time they saw them for nonsense, and never notice the discrepancy; she had seen that the same person could feel love, hate, and indifference, all at once, toward something. She had known that there were layers of memory and emotion, piled up upon each other ever since infancy, though she had always been forbidden to dig down into all that accumulated experience.

But she had never, before this, thought that there must be such layers in her own mind. She had never, before this, tried to explore those layers.

But during the walk across the Starlinshire Downs, the wait for Taillefer at the Castle Regisvert, she had begun to wonder. She found herself thinking of things, almost at random, that she had not thought of in months, or years-and for the first time in her life, she couldn’t attribute it to leakage from the thoughts of those around her.

These odd bits of thought, and of memory, must be coming from her.

And when she reached that realization, she began to deliberately look for them, to search her own memories, her own feelings-as she had been forbidden to, back in the Empire, where the government wanted all their telepaths to be nothing more than communication devices, with no thoughts or desires of their own.

She had never thought of that as something bad before. She had been trained to think that the Empire had been merciful and kind in not simply killing all the telepaths, as a danger to the state-or simply allowing hostile mobs to kill them. Everyone she knew had told her that, had believed that, and it was almost impossible for her to disagree when she could see that belief in the minds around her. That the Empire had done so because they found telepaths useful she had always known and accepted; that was the price of survival.

But it wasn’t fair. She had been denied all her own thoughts.

And, she discovered as she slept on the cold stone floor of Regisvert, her own dreams, as well. Her dreams that night were fragmentary and uneasy; her mind was not accustomed to constructing its own, without outside influence.

When she awoke she tried to remember those dreams, and could not; she sat there, groping to recover images, as the soldiers trapped and butchered the badger. She ate silently, letting her own memories drift up from wherever they had been buried, enjoying the sensation of not thinking, not listening, but just being herself.

And then she realized everyone was staring at her, that someone had asked her a question.

Susan repeated, “Did Base One send a rescue party?”

Prossie blinked, and said, “I don’t know.” Recovering quickly, she added, “I’ve been out of touch; should I see if I can make contact and ask?”

She saw some of the others glancing uneasily at one another; she saw Wilkins making a familiar, hated gesture to Marks, the clawed finger-wiggling sign used to tease telepaths, the sign that meant “freak” or “monster.”

“If you could,” Susan said.

“I’ll try,” Prossie said. She sat up straighter and closed her eyes-which was just for show, not necessary, but it seemed to be called for in this instance.

She didn’t say anything to Wilkins, didn’t acknowledge his gesture, but inside she hated him with an intensity she had never before allowed herself, a hate that was hot and crawling in her skull, a hate that was the cumulative effect of a thousand memories collected throughout her lifetime, from infancy right up to now, of being loathed just for what she was, regardless of what she did, or who she was.

Maybe she wouldn’t try at all; why should she help Wilkins and his like? How would anyone know?

But it had been Susan who asked, not Wilkins. Prossie wondered why anyone cared, why they thought of it just now-she hadn’t been listening to the conversation at all, she realized.

But whether she tried or not made little difference, really; it was up to Carrie, and as she sat, mind open and receptive, she realized that Carrie wasn’t listening, wasn’t sending, wasn’t there at all as far as Prossie could tell. No one else made contact, either.

She opened her eyes and started to speak, then caught herself.

Why were they asking about rescues?

The only possible reason was that they were hoping to go back to the ship and be rescued themselves.

There were monsters back there. Shadow would have taken an interest in the ship by now. To go back there would be insanely dangerous. And even if by some miracle the Empire really had sent a rescue party, which they had certainly had no intention of doing when she was last in contact with Carrie, Prossie did not want to go back and be rescued.

“No rescue,” she said. “They’ve decided not to risk it. We’re on our own.”

It was a lie-but who cared? These people would never know unless they returned to the Empire, and Prossie would never go back there, never go back to the hatred and oppression, the rules and limits, the constant barrage of thought.

Right now, though, she thought she had better pay closer attention to what was being said.

* * * *

“I just want to go home,” Amy said.

“Me, too,” Pel said.

“I want to wake up,” Ted said. “I’m tired of this.”

“Same thing,” Pel told him.

“I’m not real interested in staying around here, either,” Wilkins said. “The question is, what we can do about it?”

“If nobody’s rescued the lieutenant,” Sawyer asked Prossie, “what has happened to those guys?”

“I don’t know,” Prossie said. “I don’t have any way to find out; they’re cut off, no communications.” She looked Sawyer in the eye.

Sawyer frowned, obviously unhappy with the answer-or with Prossie’s behavior.